The Insurance Council of BC has revoked the licenses of 12 life insurance agents after discovering that they conspired to cheat on their qualification tests.
All 12 agents whose licenses were invalidated worked at a World Financial Group (WFG) branch in Surrey. The agents wrote their Life License Qualification Program (LLQP) tests to earn their licenses between October 2016 and June 2017.
WFG did not respond to
CBC News’ request for a comment, although the company president said that WFG “does not tolerate cheating,” after the initial suspensions.
This is not the first time WFG’s agents have been penalized for cheating.
Last fall, a third party conducted a national audit to find any discrepancies on test results from across Canada that could signal cheating. From the assessment, almost two dozen suspicious test results returned a hit – most of those results were from an “odd” group of multiple-choice exams with answers (both right and wrong ones) suspiciously identical to one another.
Following the discovery, the council suspended 21 brokers’ licenses after their exams were flagged for potential cheating. The council found that all 21 brokers came from the same brokerage – WFG – and appeared to have used the same answer keys.
After the investigations, the council moved to annul 19 of those brokers’ certificates. Twelve of the brokers accepted the ruling, while seven have filed appeals. Two are still pending,
CBC News reported.
“Our concern was that anyone who had cheated on this exam, we didn’t consider to be qualified,” said Insurance Council of BC executive director Janet Sinclair.
“You want to make sure people who are practicing are competent and that’s why we acted as we did ... You expect [agents] to conduct themselves with the utmost of integrity and cheating on an exam does not meet that characteristic.”
“Anyone who wants to practice in this area should be able to pass it without needing to cheat,” Sinclair remarked.
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